


Down a Dark Desert Highway

by PR Zed (przed)



Category: A Knight's Tale (2001), Hotel California - The Eagles (Song)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-08
Updated: 2010-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:11:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/przed/pseuds/PR%20Zed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geoffrey Chaucer is the most infuriating guest in the Hotel California.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down a Dark Desert Highway

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betweenthebliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthebliss/gifts).



The dusk is starting to fade into night when I glance out the window. A warm desert wind kicks up some sand, whirling it into a miniature tornado that weaves its way down the road. A week before Christmas, and it's still too hot for me here. It's always too hot.

Not for the first or last time, I wish I'd come here in a different time, a different place. A cooler place. The high Arctic, maybe. Or the peaks of the Andes. Or the steppes of Mongolia. The rumours are the hotel has been to all those places and more, though since I arrived it's been stuck on this forsaken stretch of highway in a part of southern California even the lizards seem to have forgotten.

The poet has been here the longest. The writer. "Geoffrey Chaucer's the name; writing's the game," he always says. Pretentious jerk, is what I call him. Never shuts up, never knows when silence is golden. Earns him a punch in the nose often enough, usually from me. Not that it'll stop him from running off at the mouth the next time.

There were others here before him—a Sumerian prince and a few Peloponnesian warriors, a Chinese monk and a gaggle of Aztec princesses, if Chaucer is to be believed--but they were gone long before I arrived. They each just disappeared one day, according to Chaucer. Here one minute, gone the next. I wish I knew their secret. We all do. Though Chaucer occasionally gets a little gleam in his eye when he's talking about the Sumerian prince, like he knows a secret that none of us do and isn't he so fucking smart. Smart as he is, he's still stuck here. Same as the rest of us.

According to Chaucer, he's been here since this place was a grimy little inn outside London. He says he holed up here to "repaire myn brokken herte." Seriously, he says it like that. Anyway, he spent a few days in a drunken stupor, and a few more days gambling until he lost every last stitch of clothing, and then woke up to find he was trapped here forever.

He doesn't drink any more, but he still gambles more than he should. I encourage him to avoid strip poker. His luck never has improved, and that much of Geoff Chaucer I do not need to see.

Me, I came in 1971, wrapped in a poncho and a haze of patchouli and weed. Ended up as the night man when the last one got bored of the job and I got bored of doing nothing. Now I do a different sort of nothing, sitting by the door, waiting for the next poor slob to arrive, and making sure none of us get out. Not that you can. Get out, that is. We've all tried and we've all failed. And I do mean all. Even the master has tried to get out of here at one time or another.

I tend to avoid Chaucer. Or he tends to avoid me. Encounters between us usually end with him saying something stupid and me punching him in the nose, so it's for the best if we don't run into each other. Except the last few weeks, he starts turning up when I'm watching the door. Talking shit. Annoying me. And all for no reason that I can figure out, except he keeps his eye on the road, even when he's working at getting under my skin.

"You waiting for someone?" I ask him yesterday. I must have been bored or something.

"Who would I be waiting for?" he returns in that fucking annoying limey accent of his. "Everyone I knew out there died hundreds of years ago."

"Then who're ya looking for?"

"No one. Everyone. Whatever poor soul makes his way to our humble establishment. After all, I wouldn't want the first face someone sees upon arrival to be your unwelcoming visage."

"Shut the fuck up, Geoff."

"I seem congenitally incapable of doing that, as you might have noticed."

"Shut up, or I'll punch you in the nose."

"You wouldn't really be a redhead, would you?"

"What?" I hate when he does that. Goes all non sequitur on me. I hate that he's the one who taught me the term non sequitur too. I got no need for Latin. Never mind that weird crap he sometimes spouts. Doesn't sound like any kind of English I know. "Shoures sote" and "pierced to the rote," my ass.

"You wouldn't have a secret affection for cakes? Wouldn't, in fact, be dying for a side of peppermint cream"

"You really want that punch in the nose, don't you?"

"It's just that you remind me of someone I used to know: a redhead with an affection for cake and a horrendous temper.

I shouldn't let him get away with that crack about my temper, but he sounds so, Christ, I don't know, sad, that I just don't have it in me to sock him in the nose. I settle for a punch on his arm. A hard punch, just so he knows I'm not going soft or anything. He winces and rubs his arm and gives me that smile of his, the one that's part nervousness, part arrogance and all Chaucer.

Tonight, he's back at my side, looking out the window, getting on my case. Except now he's real antsy. Getting antsier. Like the way I get when there's an electrical storm coming and I can feel it crackling under my skin, making the hair on my arms stand up.

He's pushed me aside and has his head out the window so I can barely see anything. I nearly miss what happens next.

The sun's down, and dusk has faded almost entirely into night, and the highway that leads to this joint is almost invisible in the gloom. And then there's a light, like a flash of lightning, but brighter. Louder. Weirder. The light burns into my retina so for a minute I can't see much of anything. And then when I finally can see, I don't believe my eyes.

Because there's a guy walking towards the hotel. Leading a horse. And this guy is wearing armour. Honest to god armour, like I saw in a museum once when I was a kid. Except in a museum the armour is all nice and shiny and clean, and this guy's armour is bashed up and dirty and tinged with rust. Like he's actually been fighting in it.

I turn to Chaucer to say "What the fuck?" but I don't get further than the "what." Because all of a sudden Chaucer's not antsy. He's dead still. And he's looking at the guy in the armour like he's the answer to every question he's ever had. Like he's the second coming. Like he's the cure to Chaucer's broken heart. Or his brokken herte. Whatever.

The guy gets close enough that he must see Chaucer in the window and he stops and takes off his helmet. Dunno what I'm expecting under that metal lid, but he looks like a surfer kid, all blond hair and big eyes. And those eyes are locked on Chaucer.

Chaucer moves first. Pushes me out of the way, unbolts the door, and is out before I can stop him. And the funny thing is, he gets out. Even when someone's gotten past me before, they've never made it out the door. Something stops them: an alien force field, a magic spell, I don't know what.

Nothing stops Chaucer, though. He's out of the hotel and running down the road and the knight guy is running towards him. They meet with a clang of the knight guy's armour and hug tighter than I've ever seen anyone hug before. Chaucer towers over the knight guy--he's a tall fucker for a writer--but the knight guy looks stronger. He'd have to be, to fight wearing steel underwear, wouldn't he? Then Chaucer pulls back, they look at each other for a second. Then they kiss.

If I thought their hug was intense, it's nothing compared to that kiss. I'm...surprised. Not shocked--nothing shocks you after a few weeks in the hotel, and I've been here for decades--but surprised. Not that Chaucer is kissing another man. Not that the man he's kissing is wearing armour. I'm surprised at the, I don't know, love I see in that kiss. Because love isn't something you see here. You see a lot of sex, a lot of people chasing a little pleasure, but not love. Not ever.

But it's definitely there between these two. And I'm pretty sure Chaucer's brokken herte isn't quite so brokken anymore. Lucky bastard.

The hair on my arms stands up, and there's a crackling sound and then that weird bright light is back and it's surrounding the two of them and that fucking horse. I can barely see Chaucer now--he's surrounded by the light, and he's got the knight guy's arms wrapped around him--but then he pulls back and looks back at me and he's got that grin he gets when he's about to do something crazy and stupid.

I try to run towards him, but I can't break the threshold; the force field holds me inside.

"Geoff," I yell. "You're not allowed to leave."

He just shrugs and winks and gives me the finger. (He taught me Latin. I taught him all the rude gestures the twentieth century had to offer.) And then they're gone. Just gone. Even the horse. All that's left is the darkness and crickets chirping and the hair on my arms standing up on end.

No one's ever left before. Not since I've been here. But now I know how those others got out: the Sumerian prince and the Peloponnesian warriors, the Chinese monk and the Aztec princesses. I wonder if that Sumerian prince had a soldier boyfriend who came and bailed his ass out of this joint.

I should be so lucky.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Shayheyred, the best beta a gal could ask for, and the person responsible for the use of Middle English found herein.


End file.
